Posted on Jan 30, 2020
The Ogun State Government says about three million residents of the state are at risk of contracting Neglected Tropical Diseases.
The state Commissioner for Health, Dr Tomi Coker, said this in Abeokuta during a press conference on Wednesday to commemorate the World NTD Day.
Coker said the three million people included 1.4 million children of school age.
He added that many people had been battling with complications arising from NTDs in the state .
The commissioner named the diseases as leprosy, onchocerciasis, lymphatic filariasis, schistosomiasis, soil transmitted helminthes and Buruli ulcer (skin ulcer).
She said none of the 20 local government areas of the state was free from NTDs.
According to Coker, NTDs are infectious diseases associated with poverty.
She said about 1.5 billion individuals in 149 countries had been affected by NTDs, with 40 per cent in sub-Saharan Africa and a quarter of the figure in Nigeria.
According to her, these diseases present a huge burden on the sufferers, with many of them developing disabilities with the attendant negative socio-economic consequences.
Coker said there would be a sensitisation programme holding in schools and communities.
She said that the state’s NTDs programme treated 780, 657 children in 6,000 schools in 2019 and trained 8,500 teachers in NTDs within the same period.